Michael A. De Leon is a graphic designer by day, but wears many hats in his off time. In 2004, after several years of covering the Spurs, he started Project Spurs, a Spurs team fansite as an outlet to provide content to Spurs fans, while continuing to write for himself and learning the ins and outs of online publishing and web design. He has since built a writing team and started a popular weekly Spurs podcast called the Spurscast.

Note: This is an mySA.com City Brights Blog. These blogs are not written or edited by mySA or the San Antonio Express-News. The authors are solely responsible for the content.

Assessing Richard Jefferson’s Aggressiveness

There were questions about how Richard Jefferson would fit into the Spurs offense when they traded for him over the summer. He started his career with the New Jersey Nets as a third option who made his name with his slashing ability. In more recent years he found himself carrying his team’s scoring load and he began taking more threes, especially last year in Milwaukee. Well, the Spurs are eight games into their season and the questions are still around.

Jefferson is averaging 15.6 points on 49.4% shooting, numbers most Spurs fans would be happy with, but it is his inconsistency causes worry. Jefferson has had games where he shot 1-of-7 and then games when he shot 7-of-8. He has shot as few as four shots and as many as 23 shots. It’s obvious that his role in the offense is still undefined and that he, and the rest of the Spurs, are not sure how to use his talents.

He has looked most comfortable when both Tony Parker and Tim Duncan missed games due to ankle injuries and Jefferson was called on along with Manu Ginobili to become a scorer. Without Parker and Duncan he averaged 26.5 points compared to 12 points with them.

One of the biggest problems is his lack of aggressiveness with Parker and Duncan on the court. Also, his shot selection has been suspect with playing with the two All-Stars. I wanted to take a closer look at shot selection issue, which in turn gives us an idea about his aggressiveness on the offensive end. To do so I looked at the shot charts from the eight games that the Spurs have played in, separating his stats for the six games with Parker and Duncan and the two without them.

I broke the court into four areas as follows:

Close: 0-5 feet from the basket

Intermediate: 6-15 feet from the basket

Long: 16 feet from the basket to three point line

Threes: Behind three point line

I decided to chart the number of shots he made and missed, the field goal percentage, the expected points and the percentage of his total shots from each area. I expected that I would find a greater percentage of his shots from the close area in those games without Parker or Duncan because he was a more assertive player in those games.